


i think i'm fallin' for you

by amtrak12



Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: F/F, First Date, Fluff, High School, in good ol' Battle Creek Michigan, nervous awkward bb yatesbert
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-18
Updated: 2017-07-18
Packaged: 2018-12-03 15:01:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11534652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amtrak12/pseuds/amtrak12
Summary: Abby is thrilled to be going on her first date with Erin. She just wishes she knew what she was doing.- or a teenaged Abby asks the age-old question: how do you romance





	i think i'm fallin' for you

**Author's Note:**

> I was supposed to save this for Yatesbert Week, but August is still far away. :P Title taken from Colbie Caillat because titles are hard af

Seventeen year old Abby stood in front of Erin's door fidgeting with the sleeves of her shirt. She’d spent an hour tossing every article of clothing she owned searching for something “cool” enough to wear tonight. Her mother had suggested a nice sweater, but “nice sweater" was an oxymoron in Abby’s wardrobe. Finally, she’d just swiped one from her brother’s closet, figuring the baggy look increased the cool factor. Now that she was standing on Erin’s porch, though, she worried it made her look too juvenile. It was probably really obvious she’d stolen this from her big brother. Oh god, why hadn’t she picked a different outfit?

The door opened, and Abby sucked in a breath. Erin hovered in the doorway, a small smile on her face. Her hair -- normally left straight -- had been curled tonight: a crystal clear sign that this was a date. Abby felt her cheeks heat up even as excited nerves grew in her stomach.

"Hi."

"Hi," Erin answered, her smile growing. "You look nice."

"So do you," Abby said. Her cheeks grew warmer, and a dozen other statements -- self-deprecating remarks, explanations for the sweater, gushes about how pretty Erin looked in that pale green sweater of her own with that one curl framing her face just right -- stayed stuck to her tongue. She shifted her eyes to think of something intelligent to say.

"Are you ready to go?"

"Yes," Erin said. "I just need my keys."

The grand plan in Abby's mind had been to pick Erin up for their date. The hitch? She didn't have her own car. Instead, she'd convinced her parents to play along, and her dad had dropped her off in the road in front of Erin’s house. Walking up the driveway alone, Abby could at least pretend she was picking Erin up.

Though, as Erin reemerged, this plan suddenly seemed really awkward. Abby didn't know what to do with her hands as they stepped off the porch. Erin had both a purse and car keys, while Abby was left to continue worrying her thumb over the inside of her sleeve. She didn't know where to walk either. Should she run around and open the car door for Erin? But Erin was the driver; people didn't open doors for the driver. She couldn't even slip into the car herself. She had to stand there like a dodo bird until Erin got the door unlocked. Maybe she should have just borrowed her parents' minivan.

(Though, who went on a date in their parents' minivan?)

Erin backed the car down the driveway after they were buckled in. Scents of something clean and sweet wafted through the car. Abby wasn't sure if it was soap or shampoo or perfume, but whatever Erin was wearing, she wanted to bury her nose in it. She panicked for a moment while she struggled to remember if she'd even put on deodorant.

(No, she had. She had.)

When they’d reached the theater and Abby was able to buy their movie tickets, she began to feel more settled. This date was costing her a paranormal zine subscription, but it was oh so worth it. Erin insisted on buying the popcorn, though. Abby thought the person who did the asking was supposed to pay for the entire date, but she'd also heard noises about splitting the cost from her mom's feminist circles. So maybe that was just one of those heterosexual rules that was less about etiquette and more about sexism. Besides, Erin didn't even spring for official albums, preferring instead to record all of her favorite songs off the radio. Maybe buying the popcorn meant she considered this date a big deal too.

They picked seats off to the side and near the back. By all accounts, it was an ideal spot for making out during a movie -- not that Abby planned on doing that. Navigating armrests and popcorn bags and cups of pop to have her first kiss with Erin sounded like a disaster waiting to happen, but she didn’t know what Erin was thinking. Maybe Erin would try to kiss her.

\-- Or maybe nothing at all would happen. The movie played on while Abby fought not to fidget. The Hard Way was entertaining, but Abby wasn't terribly invested in Michael J. Fox or his irritated partner. She was too antsy about Erin sitting _right there_ next to her. They weren't touching, their knees weren't even bumping, but she could feel her presence all the same. It sent Abby's mind into obsessive spirals of should be’s and what if’s. They weren't at the movies as Abby and Erin, Best Friends. They were here as a date. Shouldn't they be doing something different?

Abby wanted to hold Erin's hand. When she was a kid, before she figured out she was a lesbian and was instead railing against romance of all forms, she'd called hand-holding  
inconvenient. What could you do if you only had one hand available? And being  
tethered like that to another human being -- why? How was that better than walking by yourself? She'd insisted that hand-holding was clunky and inefficient and only useful for keeping little kids out of traffic. But now? Oh-ho boy, now she really wanted to hold Erin's hand.

Too bad her hand was out of reach. Abby could see it, whenever she risked a glance over to Erin, but she couldn't reach it. She couldn't even do the inch-your-hand-over-until-your-pinkies-touch move she'd seen a hundred times on television. There was a hard, plastic armrest fastened between the seats, and it wasn't budging. The only way for her to hold Erin's hand would be to reach over the top, but that would force her arm to hang higher than was natural. It was frustrating -- this whole endeavor was frustrating. She couldn't even talk to Erin because they were trapped in a dark theater surrounded by a bunch of shushers.

Abby's mood sunk. Maybe her childhood philosophy had been right: romance was for the birds. Even if it wasn't, she obviously sucked at it. Everything would be better if she and Erin stayed friends. There was no need for them to be girlfriends. After all, girlfriends could break up. Friends couldn't.

"We can pick a different movie next time," Erin said as they followed the exodus of people through the lobby.

Abby picked her gaze up off the floor. She tried to gauge by Erin's expression whether next time meant as best friends or as a second date, but she came up empty. "Like what? It's kind of slim pickings right now."

"You wanted to see Silence of the Lambs."

"Oh yeah." Abby had grown nervous again as her brain caught up to what she’d said. Maybe the phrasing "slim pickings" was too negative. Maybe Erin heard that as a commentary on the date rather than just a remark on the time of year and Hollywood's penchant for only releasing the good movies during summer and winter holidays.

She toyed with the sleeve of her sweater again before continuing. "It's okay. I don't think that movie would be worth seeing in theaters anyway. I asked Nick from my study hall, and he said the guy was a cannibal but there weren't any ghosts of the victims or anything."

Erin wrinkled her nose. "You know if they're going to put cannibals in a movie, they should at least give us some ghosts."

"Oh, totally. It'd be much more realistic," Abby said. "Being murdered and then eaten has to be one of the most traumatic ways to die. Their spirits would come back over and haunt the guy, for sure."

"If they were even able to cross over at all," Erin pointed out. "Maybe that's why some religions are so careful about preserving the body after death."

"A very good point." Their eyes met as they stopped on the sidewalk in front of the theater. Erin was smiling again. A thrill of nerves, the kind that felt like electricity, sliced through her gut, and Abby thought, 'Oh yeah, that was why I asked Erin on a date.'

She swallowed and made a move towards the car. They continued chatting, the words flowing easier now that they were tossing their paranormal theories back and forth. Abby's lingering disappointment from the theater churned with the reminder of her crush on Erin and left her feeling altogether jittery.

"So..." Erin said in the car. "What do you want to do now?"

"Um...." Abby hadn't planned much further than the movie because that had been the only thing she'd seen her older siblings do. But they had come home from their dates much later than 9:15, so they had to have done something else. Probably make-out, but where had they gone? Did they have secret make-out places? The high schoolers on TV always had secret places with not-so-secret names like Lovers Lane and Make-Out Point. Well, that was all sunshine and roses for hilly L.A. where this stuff was filmed, but Abby was in Battle Creek, Michigan. There weren't exactly a lot of nooks and crannies to hide out in.

"You can just drive around, and we can keep talking," Abby finally said. Erin agreed and started the car.

The conversation strained once they were on the road, though. Navigating traffic and stop lights drew part of Erin's focus away, and Abby found herself falling silent for too long as she gazed out the window. The third time she caught herself doing it, Abby gave herself a mental shake and then wracked her brain for a solution.

Maybe they could call off the date part of the evening and retreat back to her house. She would prefer not to, of course. She'd been purposefully keeping her parents from interacting with Erin tonight. Bearing witness to too many embarrassing meet-and-greets with her siblings’ dates had left her wary, but desperate times may call for desperate measures. They could hide in the basement away from the rest of her family and put on more movies. They could pull out that book of ley lines they'd been poring over the other day. It had updated maps, and they were still trying to determine if the changes were useful or if they rendered ley lines even more laughable than they'd already been.

Or maybe Erin would be willing to use her house for once. Her parents were in the dark about the true nature of tonight's outing. They wouldn't think to ask questions. She and Erin could hide out in Erin's room and not have to worry about anyone sticking their noses in something that wasn’t their business.

"Do you--" she started at the same time Erin tried to speak.

"Sorry." Erin flashed a self-conscious smile.

"No, go."

"Okay," Erin said. "Well, I was just going to ask if you've been to the park yet."

"The park?" Abby couldn't decide if this was code or if she meant the actual city park.

"Yes." Erin kept her eyes straight on the road. "It's not -- I mean, it's nothing exciting. There's just a creek and some playground equipment, but there were rumors about the creek saying that it was haunted." Erin nodded her head as she kept talking. "Back in middle school, I think it was. I remember the kids used to dare each other to cross it -- not because they believed in ghosts, obviously, because they didn't. They did it just to try and freak each other out, but maybe it is haunted. I've never checked it out, you know, with proper scientific scrutiny."

By this point, Abby's eyes were narrowed. She'd thought she'd done a pretty bang up job reading up on every speck of Battle Creek's haunted lore (or what passed for it) during her first week in the town. Unless Erin had fabricated the haunted creek claim as an excuse to get Abby to the park (for... kissing reasons?), then Abby had obviously missed a story.

For the first time in her life, Abby wanted a ghost story to be made up.

"Uh, yeah okay. Let's go do that. Go check out the haunted creek."

Erin agreed and turned left at the next light. It was a solid five minutes of strained silence as Erin wove them through downtown and then off into a residential neighborhood. Abby didn't recognize it as part of their high school's district, and she idly wondered if there were any potential Metaphysical Examination Society members hiding out here.

A new jolt of nerves shot through her as Erin pulled the car in by a park shelter. Her mouth went dry, and the anticipation shot up high enough to make her ears ring. Abby wished she knew how this evening would end so she could prepare for it. When Erin climbed out of the car, Abby fumbled with her seatbelt to follow.

"So, that's the creek over there," Erin said as Abby shut her car door. She pointed to the treeline behind the shelter. Abby glanced over it. Technically, Erin was the ghost expert seeing as she'd lived with a ghost for a whole year, but this park didn't look haunted to Abby.

Erin, on the other hand, looked highly suspicious. She'd dropped her arm back quickly after pointing out the creek. Now, her hands picked at the skin of her thumbs and her eyes stayed focused on the space in front of her. Abby could only see her in profile, so she couldn't read her expression. Was Erin nervous because she wanted to kiss her or was that only Abby obsessing over it?

Abby yanked her gaze back to the treeline hiding the creek. It formed a pretty solid looking line directly behind the park shelter, but faded to grass further down the road. Abby gestured at it.

"Do we walk down there or...?"

"Um," Erin hesitated. "Actually, maybe we should wait here for a bit. It is early still. Ghosts usually wait until later at night to show up."

Abby nodded because that matched up to many of the ghost sightings she'd heard about, including Erin's recounting of her own haunting.

Their footsteps made an uneven beat of crunches and scuffs as neither of them seemed willing to lead the way. Most of the shelters in this park were long and rectangular, but the one Erin had parked by was round and just big enough to cover the one concrete picnic table rising up from its floor. Erin climbed up to sit on the table and propped her feet up on the bench. Abby followed suit. When she tried to put her hand back on the table behind her, she bumped arms with Erin who'd been trying to do the same thing.

"Sorry!"

"No, it's okay," Erin said quickly.

Their eyes met, and Abby found herself caught by Erin's gaze. Erin was just so pretty, and her best friend. They hadn't known each other that long in the grand scheme of things -- less than a school year; not even six months yet -- but already she knew she adored Erin. Erin was brilliant and funny and had seen a real live ghost for cripe's sake. How that had made her an outcast at school rather than the most popular kid in the place was utterly baffling to Abby. Clearly people had bricks for brains around here.

\-- Did she mention that Erin was pretty?

Abby averted her gaze again. She focused intently on keeping her hand in her own lap after the earlier snafu. Erin's shoulder still bumped against hers, though, and that's when she realized that their legs were touching now too. She didn't remember getting that close to Erin when she'd sat down.

She tricked her brain into thinking she could feel the heat from Erin's leg, even though she knew it wasn't true. They were both wearing jeans, and the night air wasn't that cold. It was one of those rare April nights that actually felt like spring instead of winter. Still, Abby nudged her leg a fraction to press more against Erin's. Erin didn't move away.

"So, um," Abby struggled to get the words out, "what does this ghost do?"

"Oh. Uh, with the creek?" Erin turned her head away to look at the treeline. "I don't... know... exactly. No one ever told me details."

Erin's fingers were picking at the side of her thumb again. Abby stared at the rhythmic movement for a few moments. Then, without thinking, she reached her hand out and  
tapped the back of Erin's. The movement stilled.

Abby's brain went fuzzy. Underneath the haze, though, was a determined curiosity. The second tap on Erin's hand stretched into Abby running her fingertip across the back and up over Erin's knuckles. When she slid back down to her thumb, Erin suddenly flipped her  
hand over to meet her palm-to-palm. Abby sucked in a breath.

She had never held someone's hand like this before, not as a friend or a girlfriend. She remembered holding her mom's hand as a kid, bony and firm. She remembered her dad's totally engulfing hers and always making her too hot if she had to hold it for too long. She remembered her big brother and sister taking turns grabbing her, their hands always clammy and yanking as they tried to follow Mom’s orders to keep her close.

But holding a family member's hand was nothing like holding Erin's. Erin's hand was warm but not too hot, smooth but not clammy. Their fingers fitted together comfortably like they were naturally meant to be together. It felt good in a way Abby couldn't describe.

She glanced up and met Erin's just as shy gaze. A grin broke out, and they both giggled and leaned closer together. Abby felt giddy. She was on a date -- with a _girl_ \-- with _Erin_ \-- and she was holding her hand.

"I like this," she admittedly quietly. Her eyes were back on their clasped hands, but in her peripheral vision, she saw Erin nod.

"Yeah, I like this date."

"Yeah?" Abby looked up. _Erin liked being on a date with her._ The relief pushed her grin wider.

"Yeah." Erin nodded again. "It's been really good." Her eyes flickered down at something. Before Abby could process it, Erin was suddenly up close and pressing her lips to Abby's cheek.

If holding Erin's hand made Abby's brain fuzzy, then being kissed on the cheek sent it to pure static. She felt her heart pound in her chest and noticed every speck of air (or lack thereof) going in and out of her lungs as Erin straightened back up. Abby stared. Her eyes drifted down to Erin's lips on their own accord. Her mind raced for the words to ask for what she wanted, wondered if Erin even wanted it, too, but then, Erin was leaning closer again. This time, Abby leaned too.

Their lips met. Frantic, whirling thoughts of 'my first kiss' and 'this is happening' zipped across and then quieted. Details filtered in instead. She noted the pressure of their lips together, recognized her balance in this position was tenuous at best, worried if she’d have to let go of Erin's hand to keep from falling, worried if she should have licked her lips before kissing her.

They parted and kissed again. And again. Abby was just wondering if these counted as separate kisses or the same kiss when Erin's lips moved against hers. They slipped between where Abby's parted, and suddenly they were sharing a real kiss. Panic flashed for a moment as Abby fretted she didn't know how to do this, but she stuck with Erin's lead, pressing and moving when she did.

They broke apart, presumably to catch their breaths. Abby at least knew she couldn't breathe. Her lips tingled from the kiss. It felt weird, but it also felt weird to have stopped.

"So," Erin whispered, "can we do that again?"

"Yeah. Just hang on." Reluctantly, Abby let go of Erin's hand so she could brace herself on the table. But she also turned more towards Erin and brought her other hand around to retake Erin's.

Erin was smiling again when Abby moved back in to kiss her. They stayed out there until the concrete table became too uncomfortable to bear anymore, and then they moved their kissing to the car.

They never did check for a ghost in the creek.

**Author's Note:**

> you can find me on tumblr @amtrak12


End file.
